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The Crime of Poverty

The Crime of Poverty

BY

HENRY GEORGE

AN ADDRESS

Delivered in the Opera House, Burlington, Iowa, April 1, 1885,

under the auspices of Burlington Assembly, No. 3135,

Knights of Labor, which afterwards distributed

fifty thousand copies in tract form

T. .£ JOSEPH PELS FUND OF AMERICA
Cincinnali, Ohio

By iui^ouaiiga

F E8 Bo 1929

HE)!7I

The Crime of Poverty

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : I propose to talk to
J you tonight of the Crime of Poverty. I cannot, in
a short time, hope to convince you of much ; but
the thing of things I should like to show you is that
poverty is a crime. I do not mean that it is a crime to be
poor. Murder is a crime ; but it is not a crime to be
murdered; and a man who is in poverty I look upon
not as a criminal in himself so much as the victim of
a crime for which others, as well, perhaps, as himself,
are responsible. That poverty is a curse, the bitterest of
curses, we all know. Carlyle was right when he said that
the hell of which Englishmen were most afraid was the
hell of poverty ; and this is true, not of Englishmen alone,
but of people all over the civilized world, no matter what
their nationality. It is to escape this hell that we strive
and strain and struggle ; and work on oftentimes in blind
habit long after the necessity for work is gone.

The curse born of poverty is not confined to tlie poor
alone; it runs through all classes, even to the very rich.
They, too, suffer; they must suffer; for there cannot be
suffering in a community from which any class can
totally escape. The vice, the crime, the ignorance, the
meanness, born of poverty, poison, so to speak, the very
air which rich and poor alike must breathe.

I walked down one of your streets this morning, and
I saw three men going along with tlieir hands chained
together. I knew for certain that those men were not

6 The Crime of Poverty.

rich men; and, although I do not know the offense for
which they were carried in chains through your streets,
this, I think, I can safely say, that, if you trace it up you
will find it in some way to spring from poverty. Nine-
tenths of human misery, I think you will find, if you
look, to be due to poverty. If a man chooses to be poor,
he commits no crime in being poor, provided his poverty
hurts no one but himself. If a man has others dependent
upon him; if there are a wife and children whom it is
his duty to support, then, if he voluntarily chooses pov-
erty, it is a crime — aye, and I think that, in most cases,
the men who have no one to support but themselves are
men that are shirking their duty. A woman comes into
the world for every man ; and for every man who lives a
single life, caring only for himself, there is some woman
who is deprived of her natural supporter. But while a
man who chooses to be poor cannot be charged with
crime, it is certainly a crime to force poverty on others.
And it seems to me clear that the great majority of those
who suffer from poverty are poor not from their own
particular faults, but because of conditions imposed by
society at large. Therefore, I hold that poverty is a
crime — not an individual crime, but a social crime; a
crime for which we all, poor as well as rich,, are re-
sponsible.

Two or three weeks ago I went one Sunday evening
to the church of a famous Brooklyn preacher. Mr.
Sankey was singing, and something like a revival was
going on there. The clergyman told some anecdotes
connected with the revival, and recounted some of the
reasons why men failed to become Christians. One case

The Crime of Poverty. 7

he mentioned struck me. He said he had noticed on the
outskirts of the congregation, night after night, a man
who listened intently, and who gradually moved forward.
One night, the clergyman said, he went to him, saying,
"My brother, are you not ready to become a Christian?"
The man said, no he Avas not. He said it, not in a
defiant tone, but in a sorrowful tone. The clergyman
asked him why, whether he did not believe in the truths
he had been hearing? Yes, he believed them all. Why,
then, wouldn't he become a Christian? "Well," he said,
"I can't join the church without giving up my business ;
and it is necessary for the support of my wife and
children. If I give that up, I don't know how in the
world I can get along. I had a hard time before I found
my present business, and I cannot afford to give it up.
Yet, I can't become a Christian without giving it up."
The clergyman asked, "Are you a rum-seller?" No, he
was not a rum-seller. Well, the clergyman said, he didn't
know what in the world the man could be ; it seemed to
him that a rum-seller was the only man who does a
business that would prevent his becoming a Christian;
and he finally said, "What is your business?" The man
said, "I sell soap." "Soap !" exclaimed the clergyman,
"you sell soap ? How in the world does that prevent you
becoming a Christian ?" "Well," the man said, "it is this
way; the soap I sell is one of these patent soaps that are
extensively advertised as enabling you to clean clothes
very quickly ; as containing no deleterious compound
whatever. Every cake of the soap I sell is wrapped in a
paper on which is printed a- statement that it contains no
injurious chemicals, whereas the truth of the matter is

8 The Crime of Poverty.

that it does, and that though it will take the dirt out of
the clothes pretty quickly, it will, in a little while, rot
them completely out. I have to make my living in this
way ; and I cannot feel that I can become a Christian if
I sell that soap." The minister went on, describing how
he labored unsuccessfully with that man, and finally wound
up by saying, "He stuck to his soap, and lost his soul."

But, if that man lost his soul, was it his fault alone?
Whose fault is it that social conditions are such that men
have to make that terrible choice between what con-
science tells them is right, and the necessity of earning a
living? I hold that it is the fault of society; that it is the
fault of us all. Pestilence is a curse. The man who
would bring cholera to this country, or the man who,
having the power to prevent its coming here, would make
no effort to do so, would be guilty of a crime. Poverty is
worse than cholera ; poverty kills more people than pesti-
lence, even in the best of times. Look at the death
statistics of our cities ; see where the deaths come quick-
est ; see where it is that little children die like flies — it is
in the poorer quarters. And the man who looks with
careless eyes upon the ravages of this pestilence, the man
who does not set himself to stay and eradicate it, he, I
say, is guilty of a crime.

If poverty is appointed by the power which is above
us all, then it is no crime ; but if poverty is unnecessary,
then it is a crime for which society is responsible, and for
which society must suffer.

I hold, and I think no one who looks at the facts
can fail to see, that poverty is utterly unnecessary. It is
not by the decree of the Almighty, but it is because of our

The Crime of Poverty. 9

own injustice, our own selfishness, our own ignorance,
that this scourge, worse than any pestilence, ravages our
civilization, bringing want and suflfering and degradation,
destroying souls as well as bodies. Look over the world,
in this hey-day of nineteenth century civilization. In
every civilized country under the sun you will find men
and women whose condition is worse than that of the
savage; men and women and little children with whom
the veriest savage could not aflford to exchange. Even
in this new city of yours, with virgin soil around you,
you have had this winter to institute a relief society.
Your roads have been filled with tramps, fifteen, I am
told, at one time taking shelter in a round-house here.
As here, so everywhere, and poverty is deepest where
wealth most abounds.

What more unnatural than this ? There is nothing in
nature like this poverty which today curses us. We see
rapine in nature ; we see one species destroying another ;
but as a general thing animals do not feed on their own
kind; and, wherever we see one kind enjoying plenty, all
individuals of that kind share it. No man, I think, ever
sav^ a herd of buflFalo, of which a few were fat and the
great majority lean. No man ever saw a flock of birds,
of which two or three were swimming in grease, and the
others all skin and bone. Nor in savage life is there
anything like the poverty that festers in our civilization.

In a rude state of society there are seasons of want,
seasons when people starve; but they are seasons when
the earth has refused to yield her increase, when the rain
has not fallen from the heavens, or when the land has
been swept by some foe — not when there is plenty ; and

lo The Crime of Poverty.

yet the peculiar characteristic of this modern poverty of
ours is, that it is deepest where wealth most abounds.

Why, today, while over the civilized world there is
so much distress, so much want? what is the cry that
goes up? What is the current explanation of the hard
times? Over-production! There are so many clothes
that men must go ragged ; so much coal that in the bitter
winters people have to shiver ; such over-filled granaries
that people actually die by starvation! Want due to
over-production ! Was a greater absurdity ever uttered ?
How can there be over-production till all have enough?
It is not over-production, it is unjust distribution.

Poverty necessary ! Why, think of the enormous
powers that are latent in the human brain ! Think how
invention enables us to do with the power of one man,
what not long ago could not be done by the power of a
thousand. Think that in England alone, the steam ma-
chinery in operation is said to exert a productive force
greater than the physical force of the population of the
world, were they all adults. And yet we have only begun
to invent and discover. We have not yet utilized all that
has already been invented and discovered. And look at
the powers of the earth. They have hardly been touched.
In every direction as we look, new resources seem to
open, Man's ability to produce vv^ealth seems almost
infinite — we can set no bounds to it. Look at the power
that is flowing by your city in the current of the Missis-
sippi that might be set at work for you. So in every
direction energy that we might utilize goes to waste;
resources that we might draw upon are untouched. Yet
men are delving and straining to satisfy mere animal
wants ; women are working, working, working their lives

The Crime of Poverty. ii

away, and too frequently turning in despair from that hard
struggle to cast away all that makes the charm of woman.

If the animals can reason, what must they think of
us? Look at one of those great ocean steamers plough-
ing her way across the Atlantic, against wind, against
wave, absolutely setting at defiance the utmost power of
the elements. If the gulls that hover over her were
thinking beings, could they imagine that the animal that
could create such a structure as that could actually want
for enough to eat? Yet, so it is. How many even of
those of us who find life easiest are there who really live
a rational life? Think of it, you who believe that there
is only one life for man — what a fool at the very best is
a man to pass his life in this struggle to merely live? And
you who believe, as I believe, that this is not the last of
man, that this is a life that opens but another life, think
how nine-tenths, aye, I do not know but ninety-nine
hundredths of all our vital powers are spent in a mere
effort to get a living ; or to heap together that which we
cannot by any possibility take away. Take the life of
the average workingman. Is that the life for which the
human brain was intended and the human heart was
made? Look at the factories scattered through our
country. They are little better than penitentiaries.

I read in the New York papers a while ago that the
girls at the Yonkers factories had struck. The papers
said that the girls did not seem to know why they had
struck, and intimated that it must be just for the fun of
striking. Then came out the girls' side of the story, and
it appeared that they had struck against the rules in
force. They were fined if they spoke to one another,
and they were fined still more heavily if they laughed.

I a The Crime of Poverty.

There was a heavy fine for being a minute late. I visited
a lady in Philadelphia who had been a forewoman in
various factories, and I asked her, "Is it possible that
such rules are enforced?" She said it was so in Phila-
delphia. There is a fine for speaking to your next neigh-
bor, a fine for laughing; and she told me that the girls in
one place v/here she was employed were fined ten cents a
minute for being late, though many of them had to come
for miles in winter storms. She told me of one poor girl
who really worked hard one week and made $3.50, but
the fines against her were $5.25. That seems ridiculous ;
it is ridiculous, but it is pathetic, and it is shameful.

But take the cases of those even who are compara-
tively independent and well off. Here is a man working
hour after hour, day after day, week after week, in doing
one thing over and over again, and for v/hat? Just to
live. He is working ten hours a day in order that he
may sleep eight, and may have two or three hours for
himself when he is tired out and all his faculties are
exhausted. That is not a reasonable life; that is not a
life for a being possessed of the powers that are in man,
and I think every man must have felt it for himself. I
know that when I first went to my trade I thought to
myself that it was incredible that a man was created to
work all day long just to live. I used to read the Scien-
tific American, and as invention after invention was
heralded in that paper, I used to think to myself that
when I became a man it would not be necessary to work
so hard. But, on the contrary, the struggle for existence
has become more and more intense. People who want to
prove the contrary get up masses of statistics to show
that the condition of the working classes is improving.

The Crime of Poverty. 13

Improvement that you have to take a statistical micro-
scope to discover does not amount to anything. But there
is no improvement.

Improvement ! Why, according to the last report of
the Michigan Bureau of Labor Statistics, as I read yes-
terday in a Detroit paper, taking all the trades, including
some of the very high priced ones, where the wages are
from $6 to $7 a day, the average earnings amount to
$1.77, and taking out waste time, to $1.40. Now when
you consider how a man can live and bring up a family
on $1.40 a day, even in Michigan, I do not think you will
conclude that the condition of the working classes can
have very much improved.

Here is a broad general fact that is asserted by all
who have investigated the question, by such men as
Hallam, the historian, and Professor Thorold Rogers,
who has made a study of the history of prices as they
were five centuries ago. When all the productive arts
were in the most primitive state, when the most prolific
of our modern vegetables had not been introduced, when
the breeds of cattle were small and poor, when there
were hardly any roads, and transportation was exceed-
ingly difficult, when all manufacturing was done by
hand — in that rude time the condition of the laborers of
England was far better than it is today. In those rude
times no man need fear want save when actual famine
came, and owing to the difficulties of transportation the
plenty of one district could not relieve the scarcity of
another. Save in such times no man need fear want.
Pauperism, such as exists in modern times, was abso-
lutely unknown. Every one, save the physically disabled,
could make a living, and the poorest lived in rude plenty.

14 The Crime of Poverty.

But, perhaps, the most astonishing fact brought to light
by this investigation is that at that time, under those
conditions, in those "dark ages," as we call them, the
working day was only eight hours. While, with all our
modern inventions and improvements, our working
classes have been agitating and struggling in vain to get
the working day reduced to eight hours.

Do these facts show improvement? Why, in the
rudest state of society, in the most primitive state of the
arts, the labor of the natural bread-winner will suffice to
provide a living for himself and for those who are de-
pendent upon him. Amid all our inventions there are
large bodies of men who cannot do this. What is the
most astonishing thing in our civilization? Why, the
most astonishing thing to those Sioux chiefs who were
recently brought from the Far West and taken through
our manufacturing cities in the East, was not the marvel-
ous inventions that enabled machinery to act almost as
if it had intellect; it was not the growth of our cities; it
was not the speed with which the railway car whirled
along ; it was not the telegraph or the telephone that most
astonished them, but the fact that amid this marvelous
development of productive power, they found little chil-
dren at work. And astonishing that ought to be to us ;
a most astounding thing !

Talk about improvement in the condition of the
working classes, when the facts are that a larger and
larger proportion of women and children are forced to
toil. Why, I am told that, even here in your own city,
there are children of thirteen and fourteen working in
factories. In Detroit, according to the report of the
Michigan Bureau of Labor Statistics, one-half of the

The Crime of Poverty. 15

children of school age do not go to school. In New
Jersey, the report made to the legislature discloses an
amount of misery and ignorance that is appalling. Chil-
dren are growing up there, compelled to monotonous toil
when they ought to be at play; children who do not know
how to play ; children who have been so long accustomed
to work that they have become used to it ; children grow-
ing up in such ignorance that they do not know what
country New Jersey is in, that they never heard of
George Washington, that some of them think Europe is
in New York. Such facts are appalling ; they mean that
the very foundations of the republic are being sapped.
The dangerous man is not the inan who tries to excite
discontent; the dangerous man is the man who says that
all is as it ought to be. Such a state of things cannot
continue ; such tendencies as we see at work here cannot
go on without bringing at last an overwhelming crash.

I say that all this poverty and the ignorance that
flows from it is unnecessary; I say that there is no
natural reason why we should not all be rich, in the sense,
not of having more than each other, but in the sense of
all having enough to completely satisfy all physical
wants; of all having enough to get such an easy living
that we could develop the better part of humanity. There
is no reason why wealth should not be so abundant, that
no one should think of such a thing as little children at
work, or a woman compelled to a toil that nature never
intended her to perform; wealth so abundant that there
would be no cause for that harassing fear that sometimes
paralyzes even those who are not considered "the poor,"
the fear that every man of us has probably felt, that if
sickness should smite him, or if he should be taken

1 6 The Crime of Poverty.

away, those whom he loves better than his hfe would
become charges upon charity. "Consider the lilies of the
field, how they grow ; they toil not, neither do they spin."
I believe that in a really Christian community, in a
society that honored not with the lips but with the act,
the doctrines of Jesus, no one would have occasion to
worry about physical needs any more than do the lilies of
the field. There is enough and to spare. The trouble is
that, in this mad struggle, we trample in the mire what
has been provided in sufficiency for us all; trample it in
the mire while we tear and rend each other.

There is a cause for this poverty, and if you trace it
down, you will find its root in a primary injustice. Look
over the world today — poverty everywhere. The cause
must be a common one. You cannot attribute it to the
tariff, or to the form of government, or to this thing or to
that in which nations differ; because, as deep poverty is
common to them all, the cause that produces it must be a
common cause. What is that common cause? There is
one sufficient cause that is common to all nations; and
that is, the appropriation as the property of some, of that
natural element on which and from which, all must live.

Take that fact I have spoken of, that appalling fact
that, even now, it is harder to live than it was in the
ages dark and rude five centuries ago — how do you
explain it? There is no difficulty in finding the cause.
Whoever reads the history of England, or the history
of any other civilized nation (but I speak of the history
of England because that is the history with which we
are best acquainted) will see the reason. For century
after century a Parliament composed of aristocrats and
employers passed laws endeavoring to reduce wages, but

The Crime of Poverty. 17

in vain. Men could not be crowded down to wages that
gave a mere living because the bounty of nature was not
wholly shut up from them ; because some remains of
the recognition of tlie truth that all men have equal rights
on the earth still existed ; because the land of that coun-
try, that which was held in private possession, was only
held on a tenure derived from the nation, and for a rent
payable back to the nation. The church lands supported
the expenses of public worship, of the maintenance of
seminaries, and the care of the poor ; the crown lands
defrayed the expenses of the civil list; and from a third
portion of the lands, those held under military tenures,
the army was provided for. There was no national debt
in England at that time. They carried on wars for
hundreds of years, but at the charge of the landowners.
And, more important still, there remained everywhere,
and you can see in every old English town their traces
to this day, the common lands to which any of the neigh-
borhood was free. It was as those lands were enclosed ;
it was as the commons were gradually monopolized, as
the church lands were made the prey of greedy courtiers,
as the crown lands were given away as absolute property
to the favorites of the king, as the military tenants
shirked their rents, and laid the expenses they had agreed
to defray upon the nation in taxation, that bore upon
industry and upon thrift — it was then that poverty began
to deepen, and the tramp appeared in England, just as
today he is appearing in our new States.

Now, think of it — is not land monopolization a suffi-
cient reason for poverty? What is man? In the first
place, he is an animal, a land animal, who cannot live
without land. All that man produces comes from land,

1 8 The Crime of Poverty.

all productive labor in the final analysis consists in work-
ing up land ; or materials are drawn from land into such
forms as fit them for the satisfaction of human wants
and desires. Why, man's very body is drawn from the
land. Children of the soil, we come from the land, and
to the land we must return. Take away from man all
that belongs to the land, and what have you but a dis-
embodied spirit? Therefore, he who holds the land on
which and from which another man must live, is that
man's master; and the man is his slave. The man who
holds the land on which I must live can command me to
life or to death just as absolutely as though I were his
chattel. Talk about abolishing slavery — ;we have not
abolished slavery — we have only abolished one rude form
of it, chattel slavery. There is a deeper and more
insidious form, a more cursed form yet before us to
abolish, in this industrial slavery that makes a man a
virtual slave, while taunting him and mocking him with
the name of freedom. Poverty ! want ! they will sting
as much as the lash. Slavery ! God knows there are
horrors enough in slavery; but there are deeper horrors
in our civilized society today. Bad as chattel slavery
was, it did not drive slave mothers to kill their children,
yet you may read in official reports that the system of
child insurance, which has taken root so strongly in
England, and which is now spreading over our Eastern
States, has perceptibly and largely increased the rate of
child mortality! — What does that mean?

Robinson Crusoe, as you know, when he rescued
Friday from the cannibals, made him his slave. Friday
had to serve Crusoe. But, supposing Crusoe had said,

The Crime of Poverty. 19

"Oh, man and brother, I am very glad to see you, and I
welcome you to this island, and you shall be a free and
independent citizen, with just as much to say as I have —
except that this island is mine — and, of course, as I can
do as I please with my own property, you must not use
it save upon my terms," Friday would have been just as
much Crusoe's slave as though he had called him one.
Friday was not a fish, he could not swim ofif through the
sea; he was not a bird, and could not fly ofif through the
air; if he lived at all, he had to live on that island. And
if that island was Crusoe's, Crusoe was his master
through life to death.

A friend of mine, who believes as I do upon this
question, was talking a while ago with another friend of
mine who is a greenbacker, but who had not paid much
attention to the land question. " Our greenbacker friend
said, "Yes, yes, the land question is an important ques-
tion; oh, I admit that the land question is a very im-
portant question ; but then there are other important ques-
tions. There is this question, and that question, and the
other question; and there is the money question. The
money question is a very important question; it is a
more important question than the land question. You
give me all the money, and you can take all the land."
My friend said, "Well, suppose you had all the money in
the world and I had all the land in the world, what would
you do if I were to give you notice to quit?"

Do you know that I do not think the average man
realizes what land is? I know a little girl who has been
going to school for some time, studying geography, and
all that sort of tiling ; and one day she said to me : "Here

20 The Crime of Poverty,

is something about the surface of the earth. I wonder
what the surface of the earth looks like?" "Well," I
said, "look out into the yard there. That is the surface
of the earth." She said, "That the surface of the earth ?
Our yard the surface of the earth? Why, I never
thought of it !" That is very much the case not only with
grown men, but with such wise beings as newspaper
editors. They seem to think, when you talk of land, that
you always refer to farms ; to think that the land question
is a question that relates entirely to farmers, as though
land had no other use than growing crops. Now, I
should like to know how a man could even edit a news-
paper without having the use of some land. He might
swing himself by straps and go up in a balloon, but he
could not even then get along without land. What sup-
ports the balloon in the air? Land; the surface of the
earth. Let the earth drop, and what would become of
the balloon? The air that supports the balloon is sup-
ported in turn by land. So it is with everything else men
can do. Whether a man is working away three thousand
feet under the surface of the earth, or whether he is
working up in the top of one of those immense buildings
they have in New York, whetlier he is ploughing the soil
or sailing across the ocean, he is still using land.

Land! Why, in owning a piece of ground, what do
you own? The lawyers will tell you that you own from
the center of the earth right up to heaven ; and, so far as
all human purposes go, you do. In New York tliey are
building houses thirteen and fourteen stories high. What
are men, living in those upper stories, paying for ? There
is a friend of mine who has an office in one of them, and
he estimates that he pays by the cubic foot for air. Well,

The Crime of Poverty. 21

the man who owns the surface of the land has the renting
of the air up there, and would have if the buildings were
carried up for miles.

This land question is the bottom question. Man is a
land animal. Suppose you want to build a house ; can
you build it without a place to put it? What is it built
of? Stone, or mortar, or wood, or iron — they all come
from the earth. Think of any article of wealth you
choose, any of those things which men struggle for,
where do they come from? From the land. It is the
bottom question.

The land question is simply the labor question ; and
when some men own that element from which all wealth
must be drawn, and upon which all must live, then they
have the power of living without work, and, therefore,
those who do work get less of the products of work.

Did you ever think of the utter absurdity and strange-
ness of the fact that, all over the civilized world, the
working classes are the poor classes? Go into any city
in the world, and get into a cab, and ask the man to
drive you to where the working people live; he won't
take you to where the fine houses are ; he will take you,
on the contrary, into the squalid quarters, tlie poorer
quarters. Did you ever think how curious that is?
Think for a moment how it would strike a rational being
who had never been on the earth before, if such an intelli-
gence could come down, and you were to explain to him
how we live on earth, how houses, and food and clothing,
and all the many things we need, are all produced by
work, would he not think that the working people would
be the people who lived in the finest houses and had
most of everything that work produces? Yet, whether

22 The Crime of Poverty.

you took him to London or Paris, or New York, or even
to Burlington, he would find that those called working
people were the people who lived in the poorest houses.

All this is strange— just think of it. We naturally
despise poverty; and it is reasonable that we should. I
do not say— I distinctly repudiate it— that the people who
are poor are poor always from their own fault, or even
in most cases ; but it ought to be so. If any good man or
woman had the power to create a world, it would be a
sort of a world in which no one would be poor unless he
was lazy or vicious. But that is just precisely the kind
of a world that this is; that is just precisely the kind of
a world that the Creator has made. Nature gives to
labor, and to labor alone; there must be human work
before any article of wealth can be produced; and, in a
natural state of things, the man who toiled honestly and
well would be the rich man, and he who did not work would
be poor. We have so reversed the order of nature, that we
are accustomed to think of a workingman as a poor man.

And if you trace it out I believe you will see that the
primary cause of this is that we compel those who work
to pay others for permission to do so. You buy a coat,
a horse, a house ; there you are paying the seller for labor
exerted, for something that he has produced, or that he
has got from the man who did produce it ; but when you
pay a man for land, what are you paying him for ? You
pay him for something that no man produced ; you pay
him for something that was here before man was, or for
a value that was created, not by him individually, but by
the community of which you are a part. What is the
reason that the land here, where we stand tonight, is
worth more than it was twenty-five years ago ? What is

The Crime of Poverty. 23

the reason that land in the center of New York, that once
could be bought by the mile for a Jug of whiskey, is now
worth so much that, though you were to cover it with
gold, you would not have its value ? Is it not because of
the increase of population? Take away that population,
and where would the value of the land be? Look at it
in any way you please.

We talk about over-production. How can there be
such a thing as over-production while people want? All
these things that are said to be over-produced are desired
by many people. Why do they not get them? They do
not get them because they have not the means to buy
them; not that they do not want them. Why have they
not the means to buy them ? They earn too little. When
great masses of men have to work for an average of
$1.40 a day, it is no wonder that great quantities of goods
cannot be sold.

Now, why is it that men have to work for such low
wages? Because, if they were to demand higher wages,
there are plenty of unemployed men ready to step into
their places. It is this mass of unemployed men who
compel that fierce competition that drives wages down
to the point of bare subsistence. Why is it that there are
men who cannot get employment? Did you ever think
what a strange thing it is that men cannot find employ-
ment? Adam had no difficulty in finding employment;
neither had Robinson Crusoe ; the finding of employment
was the last thing that troubled them.

If men cannot find an employer, why can they not
employ themselves? Simply because they are shut out
from the element on which human labor can alone be
exerted; men are compelled to compete with each other

24 The Crime of Poverty.

for the wages of an employer, because they have been
robbed of the natural opportunities of employing them-
selves; because they cannot find a piece of God's world
on which to work without paying some other human
creature for the privilege.

I do not mean to say that, even after you had set
right this fundamental injustice, there would not be many
things to do ; but this I do mean to say, that our treatment
of land lies at the bottom of all social questions. This I
do mean to say, that, do what you please, reform as you
may, you never can get rid of widespread poverty so long
as the element on which, and from which, all men must
live is made the private property of some men. It is
utterly impossible. Reform government — get taxes down
to the minimum — build railways ; institute co-operative
stores; divide profits, if you choose, between employers
and employed — and what will be the result? The result
will be that land will increase in value — that will be the
result — that and nothing else. Experience shows this.
Do not all improvements simply increase the value of
land — the price that some must pay others for the privi-
lege of living?

Consider the matter. I say it with all reverence, and
merely say it because I wish to impress a truth upon your
minds — it is utterly impossible, so long as His laws are
what they are, that God Himself could relieve poverty —
utterly impossible. Think of it, and you will see. Men
pray to the Almighty to relieve poverty. But poverty
comes not from God's laws — it is blasphemy of the worst
kind to say that; it comes from man's injustice to his
fellows. Supposing the Almighty were to hear the
prayer, how could He carry out the request, so long as

The Crime of Poverty. 25

His laws are what they are? Consider — the Almighty
gives Lts nothing of the things that constitute wealth ;
He merely gives us the raw material, which must be
utilized by man to produce wealth. Does He not give us
enough of that now? How could He relieve poverty
even if He were to give us more? Supposing, in answer
to these prayers, He were to increase the power of the
sun, or the virtues of the soil? Supposing He were to
make plants more prolific, or animals to produce after
their kind more abundantly ? Who would get the benefit
of it ? Take a country where land is completely monopo-
lized, as it is in most of the civilized countries — who
would get the benefit of it? Simply the landowners.
And even if God, in answer to prayer, were to send down
out of the heavens those things that men require, who
would get the benefit?

In the Old Testament we are told that, when the
Israelites journeyed through the desert, they were hun-
gered, and that God sent down out of the heavens —
manna. There was enough for all of them, and they all
took it and were relieved. But, supposing that desert had
been held as private property, as the soil of Great Britain
is held ; as the soil even of our new States is being held.
Supposing that one of the Israelites had a square mile,
and another one had twenty square miles, and another
one had a hundred square miles, and the great majority
of the Israelites did not have enough to set the soles of
their feet upon, which they could call their own — what
would become of the manna? What good would it have
done to the majority? Not a whit. Though God had
sent down manna enough for all, that manna would
have been the property of the landholders; they would

26 The Crime of Poverty.

have employed some of the others, perhaps, to gather it
up in heaps for them, and would have sold it to the
hungry brethren. Consider it: this purchase and sale of
manna might have gone on until the majority of the
Israelites had given up all they had, even to the clothes
off their backs. What then ? Well, then they would not
have had anything left with which to buy manna, and the
consequence would have been that while they went
hungry the manna would be lying in great heaps, and the
landowners would be complaining about the over-produc-
tion of manna. There would have been a great harvest
of manna and hungry people, just precisely the phenom-
enon that we see today.

I cannot go over all the points I would like to; but
I wish to call your attention to the utter absurdity of
private property in land ! Why, consider it — the idea
of a man selling the earth — the earth, our common
mother. A man selling that which no man produced.
A man passing title from one generation to another.
Why, it is the most absurd thing in the world. Did you
ever think of this ? What right has a dead man to land ?
For whom was this earth created? It was created for
the living, certainly not for the dead. Well, now, we
treat it as though it was created for the dead. Where do
our land titles come from? They come from men who,
for the most part, have passed and gone. Here, in this
new country, you get a little nearer the original source;
but go to the Eastern States, and go over the Atlantic-
There you may clearly see the power that comes from
landownership.

As I say, the man that owns the land is the master
of those who must live on it. Here is a modern instance :

The Crime of Poverty. 27

you who are familiar with the history of the Scottish
Church know that in the forties there was a disruption in
the church. You who have read Hugh Miller's work on
The Cruise of the Betsey know something about it; how
a great body, led by Dr. Chalmers, came out from the
Established Church and said they would set up a Free
Church. In the Established Church were a great many
of the landowners. Some of them, like the Duke of
Buccleuch, owning miles and miles of land on which no
common Scotsman had a right to put his foot save by
die Duke of Buccleuch's permission. These landowners
refused not only to allow these Free Churchmen to have
ground upon w^hich to erect a church, but they would
not let them stand on their land and worship God. You
who have read The Cruise of the Betsey know that it is
the story of a clergyman who was obliged to make his
home in a boat on the wild sea, because he was not
allowed to have land enough to live on. In many places
the people had to take the Sacrament with the tide
coming to their knees — many a man lost his life worship-
ping on the roads, in the rain and snow. They were not
permitted to go on Mr. Landlord's land and worship
God, and had to take to the roads. The Duke of
Buccleuch stood out for seven years, compelling people
to worship on the roads, until finally, relenting a little,
he allowed them to do so in a gravel pit ; whereupon they
passed a resolution of thanks to his Grace.

But that is not what I wanted to tell you. The thing
that struck me was this significant fact: as soon as the
disruption occurred the Free Church, composed of a
great many able men, at once sent a deputation to tlie

28 The Crime of Poverty.

landlords to ask permission for Scotsmen to worship
God in Scotland and in their own way. This deputation
set out for London — they had to go to London, England,
to get permission for Scotsmen to worship God in Scot-
land and in their own native home !

But that is not the most absurd thing. In one place,
when they were refused land upon which to stand and
worship God, the late landowner had died and his estate
was in the hands of the trustees, and the answer of the
trustees was that, so far as they were concerned, they
would exceedingly like to allow them to have a place to
put up a church to worship, but they could not con-
scientiously do it, because they knew that such a course
would be very displeasing to the late Mr. Monaltie !
Now, this dead man had gone to heaven, let us hope; at
any rate he had gone away from this world, but, lest it
might displease him, men yet living could not worship
God. Is it possible for absurdity to go any further?

You may say that those Scottish people are a very
absurd people, but they are not a whit more so than we
are; I read only a little while ago of some Long Island
fishermen who had been paying as rent for the privilege
of fishing there, a certain part of the catch. They paid
it because they believed that James II., a dead man
centuries ago, a man who never put his foot in America,
a king who was kicked off the English throne, had said
they had to pay it, and they got up a committee, went to
the county town and searched the records. They could
not find anything in the records to show that James II.
had ever ordered that they should give any of their fish
to anybody, and so they refused to pay any longer. But

The Crime of Poverty. 29

if they had found that James II. had really said they
should, they would have gone on paying. Can anything
be more absurd?

There is a square in New York — Stuyvesant Square —
it is locked up at six o'clock every evening, even on long
summer evenings. Why is it locked up? Why are the
children not allowed to play there ? Why, because old Mr.
Stuyvesant, dead and gone I don't know how many years
ago, so willed it. Now, can anything be more absurd?

Yet, that is not any more absurd than our land titles.
From whom do they come? Dead man after dead man.
Suppose you get on the cars here going to Council Bluffs
or Chicago. You find a passenger with his baggage
strewn over the seats. You say, "Will you give me a
seat, if you please, sir?" He replies, "No; I bought this
seat." "Bought this seat ? From v/hom did you buy it ?"
"I bought it from the man who got out at the last
station." That is the way we manage this earth of ours.

Is it not a self-evident truth, as Thomas Jefferson
said, that "the land belongs in usufruct to the living,"
and that they who have died have left it, and have no
power to say how it shall be disposed of ? Title to land !
Where can a man get any title which makes the earth
his property?

There is a sacred right to property — sacred because
ordained by the laws of nature, that is to say, by the
law of God, and necessary to social order and civiliza-
tion. That is the right of property in things produced
by labor; it rests on the right of a man to himself. That
which a man produces, that is his against all the world, to
give or to keep, to lend, to sell or to bequeath; but how

30 The Crime of Poverty.

can he get such a right to land when it was here before
he came? Individual claims to land rest only on appro-
priation. I read in a recent number of the Nineteenth
Century, possibly some of you have read it, an article by
an ex-Prime Minister of AustraHa, in which there was
a little story that attracted my attention. It was of a
man named Galahard, who, in the early days, got up to
the top of a high hill in one of the finest parts of Western
Australia. He got up there, looked all round, and made
his proclamation : "All the land that is in sight from the
top of this hill I claim for myself : and all the land that
is out of sight I claim for my son John."

That story is of universal application. Land titles
everywhere come from just such appropriation. Now,
under certain circumstances, appropriation can give a
right. You invite a company of gentlemen to dinner,
and you say to them, "Be seated, gentlemen," and I get
into this chair. Well, that seat, for the time being, is
mine by the right of appropriation. It would be very
ungentlemanly, it would be very wrong, for any of the
other guests to come up and say, "Get out of that chair,
I want to sit there !" But that right of possession, which
is good so far as the chair is concerned for the time,
does not give me a right to appropriate all there is on the
table before me. Grant that a man has a right to appro-
priate such natural elements as he can use, has he any
right to appropriate more than he can use ? Has a guest,
in such a case as I have supposed, a right to appropriate
more than he needs, and make other people stand up?
That is what is done.

Why, look all over this country — look at this town
or any other town. If men took only what they wanted

The Crime of Poverty. 31

to use we should all have enough ; but they take what
they do not want to use at all. Here are a lot of English-
men coming over here and getting titles to our land in
vast tracts ; what do they want with our land ? They do
not want it at all ; it is not the land they want ; they have
no use for American land. What they want is the income
that they know they can in a little while get from it.
Where does that income come from? It comes from
labor, from the labor of American citizens. What we are
selling to these people is our children, not land.

Poverty? Can there be any doubt of its cause? Go
into the old countries — go into western Ireland, into the
Highlands of Scotland ; there are purely primitive com-
unities. There you will find people as poor as poor can
be — living year after year on oatmeal or on potatoes, and
often going hungry. I could tell you many a pathetic
story. Speaking to a Scottish physician who was telling
me how this diet was inducing among these people a
disease similar to that which from the same cause is
ravaging Italy (the Pellagra), I said to him: "There is
plenty of fish; why don't they catch fish? There is
plenty of game. I know the laws are against it, but
cannot they take it on the sly?" "That," he said, "never
enters their heads. Why, if a man was even suspected
of having a taste for trout or grouse he would have to
leave at once." There is no difficulty in discovering what
makes those people poor. They have no right to any-
thing that nature gives them. All they can make above a
living they must pay to the landlord. They not only
have to pay for the land that they use, but they have to
pay for the seaweed that comes ashore and for the turf

32 The Crime of Poverty.

they dig from the bogs. They dare not improve, for any
improvements they make are made an excuse for putting
up the rent. These people who work hard, live in hovels,
and the landlords, who do not work at all — oh! they
live in luxury in London or Paris. If they have hunting
boxes there, why, they are magnificent castles as com-
pared with the hovels in which the men live who do the
work. Is there any question as to the cause of the
poverty there?

Now, go into the cities, and what do you see? Why,
you see even a lower depth of poverty; aye, if I would
point out the worst evils of land monopoly I would not
take you to Connemara ; I would not take you to Skye or
Kintyre — I would take you to Dublin, or Glasgow or
London. There is something worse than physical de-
privation, something worse than starvation; and that is
the degradation of the mind, the death of the soul. That
is what you will find in those cities.

Now, what is the cause of that? Why, it is plainly
to be seen ; the people driven off the land in the country
are driven into the slums of the cities. For every man
that is driven off the land, the demand for the produce
of the workmen of the cities is lessened; and the man
himself, with his wife and children, is forced among
those workmen to compete upon any terms for a bare
living and force wages down. Get work he must or
starve — get work he must, or do that which those people,
so long as they maintain their manly feelings, dread more
than death, go to the almshouse. That is the reason,
here as in Great Britain, that the cities are overcrowded.
Open the land that is locked up, that is held by dogs-in-

The Crime of Poverty. 33

the-manger, who will not use it themselves and will not
allow anybody else to use it, and you would see no more
of tramps and hear no more of over-production.

The utter absurdity of this thing of private property
in land ! I defy anyone to show me any good from it,
look where you please. Go out to the new lands, where
my attention was first called to it, or go to the heart of
the capital of the world — London. Everywhere, when
your eyes are once opened, you will see its inequality
and you will see its absurdity. You do not have to go
farther than Burlington. You have here a most beautiful
site for a city, but the city itself, as compared with what
it might be, is a miserable, straggling town. A gentle-
man showed me today a big hole alongside one of your
streets. The place has been filled up all around it, and
this hole is left. It is neither pretty nor useful. Why
does that hole stay there? Well, it stays there because
somebody claims it as his private property. There is a
man, this gentleman told me, who wished to grade an-
other lot, and wanted somewhere to put the dirt he took
off it, and he offered to buy this hole so that he might
fill it up. Now, it would have been a good thing for
Burlington to have it filled up, a good thing for you all —
your town would look better, and you yourselves would
be in no danger of tumbling into it some dark night.
Why, my friend pointed out to me another similar hole
in which water had collected, and told me that two
children had been drowned there. And he likewise told
me that a drunken man some years ago had fallen into
such a hole, and had brought a suit against the city which
cost you taxpayers some $11,000. Clearly it is to the
interests of you all to have that particular hole I am

34 The Crime of Poverty.

talking of filled up. The man who wanted to fill it up
offered the hole-owner $300. But the hole-owner refused
the offer, and declares he will hold out until he can get
$1,000; and, in the meanwhile, that unsightly and dan-
gerous hole must remain. That is but an illustration of
private property in land.

You may see the same thing all over this country.
See how injuriously in the agricultural districts this thing
of private property in land affects the roads and the
distances between the people. A man does not take what
land he wants, what he can use; but he takes all he can
get, and the consequence is that his next neighbor has
to go further along, people are separated from each other
■further than they ought to be, to the increased difficulty
of production, to the loss of neighborhood and compan-
ionship. They have more roads to maintain than they
can decently maintain ; they must do more work to get the
same result, and life is in every way harder and drearier.

When you come to the cities, it is just the other way.
In the country the people are too much scattered ; in the
great cities they are too crowded. Go to a city like
New York, and there they are jammed together like
sardines in a box, living family upon family, one above
the other. It is an utterly unnatural and unwholesome
life. How can you have anything like a home in a tene-
ment of two or three rooms? How can children be
brought up healthily with no place to play? Two or
three weeks ago I read of a New York judge who fined
two little boys five dollars for playing hop-scotch on the
street — where else could they play? Private property in
land had robbed them of all place to play. Even a tem-
perance man, who had investigated the subject, said that

The Crime of Poverty. 35

in his opinion the gin palaces of London were a positive
good in this, that they enabled the people whose abodes
were dark and squalid rooms to see a little brightness,
and thus prevent them from going wholly mad.

What is the reason for this overcrowding of cities?
There is no natural reason. Take New York, one-half
of its area is not built upon. Why, then, must people
crowd together as they do there? Simply because of
private ownership of land. There is plenty of room to
build houses, and plenty of people who want to build
houses, but before anybody can build a house a blackmail
price must be paid to some dog-in-the-manger. It costs,
in many cases, more to get vacant ground upon which
to build a house than it does to build the house. And then
what happens to the man who pays this blackmail and
builds a house? Down comes the tax-gatherer and fines
him for building the house.

It is so all over the United States — the men who
improve, the men who turn the prairie into farms, and
the desert into gardens, the men who beautify your
cities, are taxed and fined for having done these things.
Now, nothing is clearer than that the people of New
York want more houses ; and I think that even here in
Burlington you could get along with more houses. Why,
then, should you fine a man that builds one? Look all
over this country — the bulk of the taxation rests upon
the improver; the man who puts up a building or estab-
lishes a factory, or cultivates a farm, he is taxed for it;
and not merely taxed for it, but I think, in nine cases out
of ten, the land which he uses, the bare land, is taxed
more than the adjoining lot, or the adjoining 160 acres

36 The Crime of Poverty.

that some speculator is holding as a mere dog-in-the-
manger, not using it himself, and not allowing anybody
else to use it.

I am talking too long; but let me, in a few words,
point out the way of getting rid of land monopoly,
securing the right of all to the elements which are neces-
sary for life. We could not divide the land. In a rude
state of society, as among the ancient Hebrews, giving
each family its lot, and making it inalienable, we might
secure something like equality. But in a complex civil-
ization that will not suffice. It is not, however, necessary
to divide up the land. All that is necessary is to divide
up the income that comes from the land. In that way we
can sectire absolute equality; nor could the adoption of
this principle involve any rude shock or violent change.
It can be brought about gradually and easily by abolish-
ing the taxes that now rest upon capital, labor, and im-
provements, and raising all our public revenues by the
taxation of land values ; and the longer you think of it
the clearer you will see that in every possible way it will
be a benefit.

Now, supposing we should abolish all other taxes,
direct and indirect, substituting for them a tax upon
land values, what would be the effect ? In the first place,
it would be to kill speculative values. It would be to
remove from the newer parts of the country the bulk of
the taxation, and put it on the richer parts. It would be
to exempt the pioneer from taxation, and make the larger
cities pay more of it. It would be to relieve energy and
enterprise, capital and labor, from all those burdens that
now bear upon them. What a start that would give to

The Crime of Poverty. 37

production ! In the second place, we could, from the
value of land, not merely pay all the present expenses
of government, but we could do infinitely more. In the
city of San Francisco, James Lick left a few blocks of
ground to be used for public purposes there, and the
rent amounts to so much, that out of it will be built the
largest telescope in the world, large public baths, and
other public buildings, and various costly monuments. If,
instead of these few blocks, the whole value of the land
upon which the city is built had accrued to San Fran-
cisco, what could she not do ?

So in this little town, where land values are very
low as compared with such cities as Chicago and San
Francisco, you could do many things for mutual benefit
and public improvement did you appropriate to public
purposes the land values that now go to individuals.
You could have a great free library; you could have an
art gallery; you could get yourselves a public park, a
magnificent public park, too. You have here one of the
finest natural sites for a beautiful town that I know of,
and I have traveled much. You might make on this site
a city that it would be a pleasure to live in. You will
not, as you go now — oh! no! Why, the very fact that
you have a magnificent view here will cause somebody
to hold on all the more tightly to the land that commands
this view, and charge higher prices for it. The State of
New York wants to buy a strip of land so as to enable
the people to see the Niagara, but what a price she must
pay for it. Look at all the great cities ; in Philadelphia,
for instance, in order to build their great city hall they
had to block up the only two wide streets they had in the

38 The Crime of Poverty.

city. Everywhere you go you may see how private
property in land prevents pubUc as well as private
improvement.

But I have no time to enter further into details. I
can only ask you to think upon this thing, and the more
you will see its desirability. As an English friend of
mine puts it, "No taxes and a pension for everybody;"
and why should it not be ? To take land values for public
purposes is not really to impose a tax, but to take for
public purposes a value created by the community. And
out of the fund which would thus accrue from the com-
mon property, we might, without degradation to anybody,
provide enough to actually secure from want all who
were deprived of their natural protectors, or met with
accident; or any man who should grow so old that he
could not work. All prating that is heard from some
quarters about its hurting the common people to give
them what they do not work for is humbug. The truth
is, that anything that injures self-respect, degrades, does
harm ; but if you give it as a right, as something to which
every citizen is entitled, it does not degrade. Charity
schools do degrade the children that are sent to them, but
public schools do not.

But all such benefits as these, while great, would be
incidental. The great thing would be that the reform I
propose would tend to open opportunities to labor and
enable men to provide employment for themselves. That
is the great advantage. We should gain the enormous
productive power that is going to waste all over the
country, the power of idle hands that would gladly be at
work. And that removed, then you would see wages
begin to mount. It is not that everyone would turn

The Crhne of Poverty. 39

farmer, or everyone build himself a house if he had an
opportunity for doing so, but so many could, and would,
as to relieve the pressure on the labor market and provide
employment for all others. And as wages mounted to
the higher levels then you would see the productive power
increased. The country where wages are high is the
country of greatest productive power. Where wages are
highest there will invention be most active; there will
labor be most intelligent ; there will be the greatest yield
for the expenditure of exertion. The more you think of
it the more clearly you will see what I say is true. I
cannot hope to convince you in talking for an hour or
two, but I shall be content if I shall put you upon inquiry.
Think for yourselves ; ask yourselves whether this wide-
spread fact of poverty is not a crime, and a crime for
which everyone of us, man and woman, who does not
do what he or she can do to call attention to it and to
do away with it, is responsible.

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